


next stop: unconcious pining

by Shattering_Colors



Category: Free!
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-09
Updated: 2018-08-09
Packaged: 2019-06-24 04:20:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15622425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shattering_Colors/pseuds/Shattering_Colors
Summary: In which Ayumu and Gou don't know, because they just brush it off.





	next stop: unconcious pining

**Author's Note:**

> Gou is a disaster lesbian, thanks for coming to my TED Talk.

The breeze was light and gentle that Friday. Trees danced in what almost seemed like slow motion, leaves barely rustling in the slow wind. Every couple of minutes, a flower petal would detach itself from some tree that lined the school property and flutter to somewhere or to no where - maybe the ocean, using the wind as its guide.

The chlorinated, summer sun-heated (yet still absolutely freezing) water in the pool rippled and jumped as the boys swam through, changing and shifting to allow their speed and stroke.

The only person who wasn't following their club role was Ayumu, but that would have been a lie if Gou had scratched the back of her neck and said she didn't know where the smaller, dark-haired girl was.

Gou knew that Ayumu was trying to peek over her shoulder to take a look at the reigmen, which Gou herself was barely paying attention to. Not that she felt the shorter girl's presence like a sixth sense or something, but she felt Ayumu's slow, gentle breaths on the back of her neck. It was becoming mildly creepy.

"Ayumu-chan?" Gou smiled brightly, fixed a stubborn strand of hair that wanted to rebel, and turned around as she wedged the clipboard under the crook of her arm. "Is something wrong?"

"No." Ayumu replied hushedly and tilted her head thoughtfully as she seemed to have a habit of doing, her short, dark hair spilling to the side like infectious midnight. "Actually, would you mind helping me with something later?"

Gou blinked, not expecting the offer. "Of course. What do you need help with?" She really, really hoped it wasn't studying. She had forgotten all of the things teachers had taught her in her first year, only keeping vauge thoughts of some English assignment that had made her and Chigusa giggle. "Is it schoolwork? I'll help, but I don't know how much help I'll be because I've forgotten all of that stuff from my first year except for about a handful of things."

Ayumu  looked up. "Thank you for the offer, but I don't need help with schoolwork." Ayumu shuffled over to the bench beneath the awning that had a perect view of the pool. She pulled out a flimsy, purple soft-covered notebook from beneath her jacket and held it up for Gou to see, like an invitation.

Ayumu proceeded to sit down and shrug the jacket on. Gou took that as a cue to go over. She meandered over to Ayumu and plopped down beside her underclassman, and peeked over her shoulder to see what was in the notebook, not before nagging Nagisa and Rei about chitchatting during practice instead of swimming like they were supposed to be doing (which made Nagisa laugh and cause Rei to go into a frenzy about not slacking off and 'it was entirely Nagisa-kun's idea').

"This looks like some science project," Gou commented as she skimmed the page. Not that she would have remembered it anyways. She turned to Ayumu, who was engrossed in the words in the notebook. "Is it?" The handwriting was pretty. Nice and neat, fitting for someone like Ayumu.

"No. It's personal." Ayumu's eyes skimmed the pages one by one as her fingers dusted the excess graphite left behind. Soon enough, there was a thin film of grey on Ayumu's fingertips. "Here it is."

Gou leaned over to get a better view of the page. "Ayumu-chan, you like plants?" It was a quick sketch of a small hanging houseplant that took up most of the page. Ayumu had paid attention to the intricate workings of the patterns in the basket, the swirls and drips in the curvatures of the container. The softly shaded leaves drooped down over parts of the basket and Gou had to blink twice before she could lean back to admire the piece as a whole. "Ayumu-chan, this is amazing!" Gou wiped at her eyes as she sniffed dramatically.

Ayumu slid the pages back together and closed the notebook. "Gou-san," Ayumu shifted her body and leaned over, softly placing a hand on Gou's shoulder (after she tried to dust the graphite off of her fingers), not really knowing how to react, "are you crying?"

"No!" Gou cried, waving her hands frantically. Across the pool, Nagisa giggled to himself as he sat on the side chatting with Rei, obviously finding the end bit of the girl's conversation quite humorous. Gou pointedly rolled her eyes at him and glared.

"Oh." At the gentle, hushed breath of Ayumu, Gou halted in her staring contest with Nagisa and directed her attention back to Ayumu. "One other thing, Gou-san." Ayumu's eyes flicked down to the cuff of her sweatshirt sleeve, like she was considering something. "When you come over, could you please bring your phone or some other electronic device, with some music on it? It doesn't matter what kind."

Gou's eyebrows jumped together in confusion for a second. She decided not to question it; Ayumu was odd in her own ways, too. "All right. It'll be no problem." She stood up and made her way to the side of the pool to give the boys a rundown of how they did for the day and what they'd need to work on.

Ayumu pulled a small container of hand sanitizer out of her pocket and turned it over in her hands a couple of times before actually cleaning her hands. The graphite was gone when she inspected her fingertips. Her hands also smelled like 'sugary sweet vanilla', which was a plus (that name didn't do the scent any justice, she had decided).

 

"So after school today would work, right?" Gou's school bag was slung over her shoulder, across her body (it was a tactic that Rin had taught her to do, especially with a purse so that no one could steal it so easily).

Leaves danced and swirled, both around the two high schoolers and in the street. The breeze was a bit rougher now, but all they needed to do was make it to the train. They had linked their forearms together (per Gou's suggestion) so that they could move to the inner side of the sidewalk to allow the busier, more rushed traffic the space they needed.

"Hmm?" Ayumu glanced up from the pavement, pulled out of her deep thought. "I think that could work. I'll just have to check with my dad, if that's fine." Ayumu rummaged through her bag without looking, not wanting to be a hazard to the traffic on the sidewalk.

"Of course that's fine!" Gou nodded even though Ayumu was typing away on her phone. She was aware Ayumu was listening. "I'll tell my mom afterwards, if your dad agrees." They scuffled to the side to avoid being hit by a fast cycler. The wind blew their hair into interesting styles.

Ayumu's eyebrows furrowed slightly and she frowned lightly. "Is your mom alright with this? She hasn't met me," Ayumu pointed out the fact with concerned eyes. "Not that I'm uh… a bad influence."

"Nah," Gou waved her hand dismissively and chuckled, "she's fine with it. If it was a guy or something, she would probably want me to tell her. Well, unless it was Nagisa or Rei. She's fine with me going over to their house without any notice and vice versa." When she turned her gazd back to Ayumu, her underclassman was sporting a perplexed expression. "Nagisa, Rei, and I… are really close. We're in the same year and we've been apart of this swim club since it basically began - with the exception of Rei. So when Haruka-senpai and Makoto-senpai left for university, we became a bit closer than we had been previously. And she's already used to Nagisa barreling in on weekends with a party sized bag of brie flavored chips and Rei in tow."

Ayumu was quiet for a minute, running through what to say. "Do all of you eat all of the chips that day?"

Gou laughed before responding. "No, Nagisa eats all of them." Ayumu looked positively mortified - probably silently asking herself if Gou was joking or something. Her face expressed the feeling that resonated in Gou's gut every weekend she watched Nagisa singlehandedly consume the entire bag. "I keep telling him that it's unhealthy and he just tells me 'I'm a swimmer and I work out a lot so I can have some chips if I want to'. But his entire diet is basically solely junk food. I'm glad that he hasn't had a heart attack yet, however I'm confused as to how he hasn't had one yet. I've never seen him consume something even mildly healthy unless Rei bargained with him before hand."

Ayumu jumped when her phone vibrated.  She glanced down at it and read the message. "It's fine if you come over."

Gou found herself staring at something on Ayumu's cheek. "Oh. Ayumu-chan, hold on." Gou settled a hand on Ayumu's shoulder and the shorter girl halted in her tracks.

Ayumu stopped and blinked. "Is something wrong?" Her eyebrows drew together again. Gou found herself disliking when Ayumu's eyebrows did that thing.

"No. You've just," Gou plucked the tiny eyelash off of the dark-haired girl's cheek, "got an eyelash." Gou expectantly held out her pointer finger for Ayumu while she silently prayed that there wouldn't be a sudden gust of wind that would interrupt Ayumu's wish-making.

Ayumu stared at Gou's fingertip with an expression that was caught between hesitation and confusion, something of an unsure mix of both. "Gou-san, I don't really need my eyelash. But thanks?"

"No, no," Gou shook her head insistently. "You need to make a wish."

Ayumu met her gaze with a decidedly puzzled expression, unsure of what to think. "I do?"

"Yes!" Gou cried, using her free hand to tug at her hair in desperation. "Now please make your wish before a gust of wind comes out of the blue and wooshes it away!" Ayumu closed her eyes to make her wish. Gou didn't want to intrude, so she looked her clouds. The sky was blue and there weren't that many that were floating up above their heads. Most were lined at the horizon.

"Like that?" Ayumu questioned, unsure if she had done it correctly.

When the dark-haired girl peered back down at her fingertip, the eyelash was gone.

"Yeah! Exactly like that." Gou beamed, proud to pass on her and her mother's tradition onto someone else. She tapped her finger on her chin in thought. "Was it hard to blow away or did it go when you blew?"

"It went right away. Why?" Ayumu asked, eagerness seeping into her usually quiet, typically more monotone voice. The gust of wind Gou had been expecting came and tousled their hair (more of Ayumu's than Gou's since the older girl had kept hers in a low ponytail) even more than the last big gust.

"That's good." Gou clapped her hands together in praise. "That means it will come true without much difficulty."

Ayumu was fixing her hair when she gasped. "Really, Gou-san?" Stars were close to appearing in Ayumu's eyes like they were in a western cartoon or something.

"Yeah!" Gou cheered, enthusiastically throwing her free hand into the air with it clenched as a fist.

"Ah… Gou-san." Ayumu flinched as a gust of wind assulted them with leaves. She dusted her jacket off and shrugged a leaf off of her shoulder.

Gou plucked a leaf off of the top of Ayumu's head and discarded it onto the sidewalk before turning to her underclassman. "Yes?"

"Did you use the word 'whoosh' as a verb?" Ayumu locked her gaze into Gou's, as though this was the most serious conversation they had ever and would ever have.

Gou was quiet for a second. "Well… yeah? Like, leaves whoosh, cars whoosh, wind… whooshes?" She turned away from Ayumu, muttering something about grammar when Ayumu unhooked her arm from Gou's and walked ahead of her. "Hey, wait!" The red-head called out, jogging to catch up.

"We'll be late if we don't hurry up." Ayumu huffed out a breath. "'Whoosh' is not a word."

It is a word and Gou was going to prove Ayumu wrong. "Actually." Gou pulled her phone out of her bag and opened up the dictionary app, typing in the word 'whoosh'. "According to Merriam-Webster, the word 'whoosh' can be defined as 'a swift or explosive rush' as well as 'the sound created by such a rush - often used interjectionally'." She flipped the screen to face Ayumu with a smug expression that emitted the pride and satisfaction of being victorious.

"Oh. Pardon me then." Ayumu repiled softer than she normally spoke.

Gou interlaced their hands with a giggle. "It's fine! Friends bicker all the time over meaningless things."

A small, gentle smile overtook Ayumu's expression that had previously been laced with uncertainty. "Yeah."

The train station came within view. Gou tugged on the hand in hers, experimentally. Ayumu didn't let go; instead, she looked up at the taller girl through her bangs. "Let's go!" Gou began to run, wind whipping their faces as they drew nearer and nearer to the station. Ayumu kept the pace with her, without a single word.

The two girls gasped for breath when they entered the small building that housed the ticket center. They hadn't stopped from the time they started to the time they'd gotten in. They dramatically collapsed on the bench closest to the door, a tangled mess of leaves, heaving chests, and giggles. A couple of people spared them annoyed glancs, but made no comments.

Ayumu made no motion to shake Gou's arm off of the top of her head. "Gou-san, we shouldn't do that again." Ayumu rasped out in between gasps with a light smile as she peered at the redhead out of the corner of her eye.

Gou tipped her head back to rest it on the refreshingly cool glass of the pane of the window. Laughter bubbled up to her lips from the pit of her stomach. She had felt so alive! "Agreed! Very, very agreed." She nodded, then continued because there was one point. "We're not in shape enough for something as spontaneous as that."

Ayumu dusted the tips of her palms together in thought. "Maybe we should begin swimming."

Gou cringed, the mention of her swimming bringing up memories of a procession of people dressed in white gowns, all walking single-file beside the ocean. Her voice caught her her throat and for a second, her eyes watered. "Oh, I can't swim," she responded with a certain airiness of her voice.

Ayumu's eyebrows furrowed together into almost one long line of an eyebrow, but she said nothing as she chose to purse her lips instead. She scuffled her way over to the ticket machine. "I'll order the tickets." She called over her shoulder as she began to punch buttons on the machine about their numbers and routes and such.

"Oh, I can pay for mine." Gou volunteered, sitting up straighter to have a better view of Ayumu. She found herself staring at Ayumu's narrow frame as the small girl hunched herself over the machine. Gou wiped away the grief from underneath her eyelids, her gaze unblinking.

"I know. You're going out of your way to help me, so I can do is pay your fare for the 'to' part of the trip."  She could barely hear Ayumu's voice over the commotion as the younger girl looked up, soft yellow eyes glistening yet barely visible from her wall of hair that she called bangs.

Gou crossed her arms, unhappy with someone else paying for her. Even if it was a gesture of kindness.

A couple minutes later, Ayumu's shoes quietly clapped against the faux wooden flooring as she made her way around the line behind her and back to Gou. She was probably the quietest thing in the station's lobby, save for the people who were listening to music on their earbuds as they fixed a vacant stare somewhere while they reflected on a prior or upcoming event in their life.

"Gou-san." Gou flicked her head up as Ayumu squished herself beside Gou, preferring not to be too close to the chatting older women who were just a little too loud. "Here's your ticket." Ayumu handed the slip of paper over to the redhead.

Gou accepted the paper. She folded it twice before slipping it in her pocket.

 

The train was a couple minutes late, but they didn't complain. It was typical for the trains to be a little bit wonky during the afternoon.

"So you have a pet cat?" Ayumu was leaning over Gou's shoulder as the latter scrolled through miscellaneous pictures of said cat on her phone after they sat down and had their tickets collected.

"Yeah. Steve's a bit of a lazy-bones cat." She smiled over one picture where it seemed like Steve was looking directly at the camera to get his good side. The only odd thing was that Steve was in the background and wasn't even the object that was originally going to be photographed. But Gou had liked it so she hadcropped out everything else except for the overweight cat.

"Have you tried to get him to be active? Cat toys and such?" The sunlight framed Ayumu's face and highlighted her cheeks, giving the opposite side of her face a tender shadow.

"Mhmm." Gou nodded, practically oblivious as to what the question was. She made her decision. "Stay like that." She exited out of her pictures and opened up the camera.

"Stay like what?" Ayumu asked, her eyebrows drawing close together.

The shutter noise loudly fired three times, causing some heads to swivel and shoot accusatory glares at Gou for disturbing one of the main silent-but-known rules of being in public: don't be noisy.

She smiled - albiet a bit nervously - as she waved at the onlookers as a nonverbal apology for disrupting the serenity of silence that so many people could somehow maintain.

"Uhm." Ayumu's voice was just above a whisper, her gaze averted to her lap. "Why'd you take a picture of me?"

Gou bit her lip, flustered. "There was nice lighting." She supplied. "When there's nice lighting, lighting like there just was, on something that thing takes that lighting and subconciously uses it to enhance their looks while you have the opportunity to take a picture, you obviously can't let that go away." Gou hoped that her explanation made sense, but with the blank look on Ayumu's face, she couldn't really tell if the younger girl understood or was peocessing the explanation.

"So the lighting made me look attractive? Ayumu looked up at her upperclassman with a curious gaze.

"Well...." Gou paused to attempt to formulate something to say in her head. "You're always pretty. You don't need lighting to do that." Red lights flashed and sirens blared in Gou's mind as her only thought was stuck on repeat. "I'm sorry."

"Sorry for what? You're my friend, you don't have anything to apologize for, Gou-san." Ayumu's gentle tone and small, honest smile made the redhead flush a light shade of pink.

This would be a long ride.

 

Ayumu's 'house' was smaller than Gou had imagined  it would be. For one, Gou had thought that it would be an actual house. Granted, it only housed Ayumu and her father so they didn't need much space, but it was a little cramped, even for a two bedroom, two bath apartment.

"I'm home." Ayumu announced to the empty living room as she slipped her shoes off in the genkan, exchanging them for slippers. "Come in," she nodded to Gou after the other had done the same.

Gou noticed a couple picture frames sat on the windowsill, a coffee maker sat on the countertop next to the refrigerator, she was paying attention to the details of the apartment like she'd never go inside again, for some reason.

"Sorry if my room is a little bit messy." Ayumu turn the handle and opened the door to reveal... a room that was certainly not messy.

It sure had a whole lot of plants, though. Some flowers were clustered on the windowsill while others were onto of Ayumu's tall dresser in the corner of her room. When Gou looked up, a couple leaves peeked over the rim of a basket. "It's not at all messy, especially if you compare it to the current state of my room." She intentionally glanced down to the floor to ignore the look that Ayumu was probably giving her. "Anyways," she began louder, clearing her throat, "what was it you wanted to bring me over for? Something about music, right?" She found herself staring at the leaves of the plant above her again, wondering how Ayumu can sleep when these things begin to shed their leaves like a lizard shedding its skin.

"I wanted your help in making a playlist." Ayumu pulled out her desk chair, before she worked on pulling up another. "Plants respond to music, or so I've heard. And I want your help to make a playlist since you seem up to date on hit music." She sat the other chair next to hers and patted it as she sat down, as though to invite Gou to sit.

Gou complied, slowly blinking with furrowed her eyebrows as she sat down as though to think over something. "You're not?"

Ayumu flushed and turned to pull out her notebook. "I typically change the station. It's all garbage to me, pretty much."

Gou hummed. "So," she riffled through her pocket for her phone, "what genre first? I've got many playlists."

"Whatever you like best," Ayumu replied as she leafed through her notebook, "we may be here a while, after all."

In all honesty, Gou was fine with that.

 

Ayumu's soft hand loosely gripped Gou's shoulder and shook it. "Gou-san? Dinner." Gou blinked and flicked her eyes to the window.

The sky was a dark shade of blue, not quite the midnight that enveloped all sometime around three in the morning, but it was the color that came after the fading lanvenders and pinks and faint yellows as the sun set. "Wait. The sun's set already? That's odd. I mean," Ayumu's hushed giggling made her cut herself off, more curious as to what the younger girl was chuckling at. "What?" She didn't mean for her voice as to sound as low and grouchy as it was, truthfully.

"Well, you see," Ayumu cleared her thoat to stifle a giggle, "the reason why the sun has set so inexplicably fast is because you fell asleep at one point in time. I think it was when we were going through the classical playlist."

Gou wiped the drool from her chin. "And uh... how long ago was that?" She tried not to sound as awkward as she felt.

"Oh, only thirty... no fourty minutes ago. You haven't been out long." Ayumu turned towards the door and began to make her way out before pausing in the doorway. "You want dinner, right?"

Gou blinked drowsily for her vision to focus on the dark haired girl. "Cool." Gou dropped her head back down to her arm, falling back to sleep instantaneously.

A smile graced Ayumu's lips as she walked over to her bed and pulled off a pillow and a cotton blanket. She wrapped the blanket around Gou's shoulders and waited a minute to see if she stirred (she didn't) before slowly lifting her head and placing the pillow inbetween her arm and head. Gou drooled but didn't make any other movements. Ayumu inched her way past the desk to her nihgtstand and plucked a tissue from the box and placed it right beside Gou's sleeping figure.

 

"My mom wants to know if I can sleep over." Gou rested her head on the table as she skipped the next song (too edgy and loud to be played at this hour) before opening up her messages.

Ayumu tossed Gou a mildly confused glance. "Your mom?" She continued twirling her pencil around her fingers with an expectant, patient gaze.

"Yeah. Since all the trains have stopped running. Because it's uhhh... 10:49 at night?" Gou showed the screen to Ayumu to have her validate the time. The latter flinched and mumbled something about Gou's screen brightness.

"Yeah. That's fine." Ayumu's eyes darted across the room to the door, but she wasn't looking at it. "The light out there is on, so my dad's home. He's fine with it." Gou nodded. "You don't have anything to sleep in."

Gou looked down at herself. She was still wearing their school's uniform. Before she came, she hadn't expected it to take as long as it had ended up taking. "Yeah, I guess not. Sleeping in my uniform would be a really bad idea." Her mom did the laundry and Gou didn't want to be in the situation of having to explain why her uniform was so wrinkled.

"You can borrow one of my shirts." Ayumu offered, standing up.

 

Three minutes later, with Gou clad in navy plaid sweatpants and an orange concert shirt, the duo was faced with another problem.

"Where should we sleep?" Ayumu broke the ten-second-old silence. Gou groaned and Ayumu flashed her a concerned glance. "What's wrong?"

The heel of Gou's hands were ground into her cheeks. "I was just thinking, if we didn't mention it, the problem would solve itself." She replied drowsily. "I'll take the chair, you take the bed."

"No," Ayumu refused, "you're the guest, you take the bed. I'll take the floor, we have extra blankets anyways."

 

The lighthearted bickering ended only after two rounds of rock paper scissors at the suggestion of 'we could both take the bed'.

"This was fun, today." Gou announced quietly as she listened to the soft hum of traffic outside as she pulled her side of the blankets closer to herself, including one of the knit blankets Ayumu made herself. "We should do something like this again, sometime soon."

"I agree, it was nice. And we should." Ayumu stuttered and cleared her throat. "Do something like this, soon, I mean."

"Wanna go out to the mall or something tomorrow?" Gou suggested, turning so that she laid on her back. "We can try to find the weirdest stuff and compare it like a competition or something."

"Did you say 'go out'? Like, romantically?" Gou could tell that Ayumu was blushing, even with the minimal light of the moon.

Gou turned to face Ayumu. "I wasn't really going to suggest that until later, but yeah. Romantically go out, on a date. Because I like you, a lot."

Ayumu seached for Gou's hand. Unable to see in the darkness, she kept patting the matress. Gou knew what she was searching for, so they played a ten second game of hot-and-cold. "I've never really liked someone the way I like you. No one ever made me flush in middle school, unless it was during gym and we had to run. Wait, that's an action." Ayumu groaned in embarrasment.

"I get what you mean, Ayumu-chan." Gou nodded and squeezed the midnight-haired girl's hand to channel reassurance to her. "There was only one other girl that gave me butterflies, and it was my friend Chigusa, but I didn't act on those feelings because I didn't want to ruin the friendship."

"Gou-san, don't you like muscles?" Ayumu's eyebrows shifted together.

Gou released the younger girl's hand so she could cross her arms. "I can appreciate something attractive! And muscles are attractive!"

Ayumu shrugged, as though to say 'that's fair'. "What do we do now?"

"Well, for starters," Gou began, taking both of Ayumu's hands in hers, "you don't need the honorific on my name. I'm your girlfriend."

"Matsuoka Gou, you are my girlfriend." Ayumu procliamed with her head held high, like a queen or something.

"Why did you say it so formally?" Gou beamed and giggled, finding the idea of being Ayumu's girlfriend the absolute best thing.

"Because I needed to say it formally to feel it!" Ayumu huffed. "Anyways."

"Anyways!" Gou leaned in and tilted her head. "If I'm the queen, this'll be the part in the fairytale where she kisses the person she loves."

"But this isn't a fairytale." Ayumu retorted, with no malice in her voice.

Gou released her hand to cup Ayumu's cheek. The shorter girl leaned into her girlfriend's hand. "We can make it one, right?"

Their noses touched and Ayumu giggled. "But of course, my queen."


End file.
